C++ is a programming language developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories
by Bjarne Stroustrup [17] in the early 1980's. The language
was designed with the intent of merging the efficiency and conciseness of C
with the object-oriented programming features of SIMULA-67.
Since its creation, the language has evolved rapidly and several new
features have been added since its initial release in 1985.
The language also promises to provide support for several other
useful mechanisms such as parameterized types and exception handling
in the near future. A formal ANSI-C++ committee (X3J16) has since been
established to help develop an accurate and reliable standard
for the language which should eliminate most, if not all, ambiguities
in the C++ compilers and translators of today. It is expected that
this committee will adopt most of the rules present in the ANSI base
document The Annotated C++ Reference Manual as written by Ellis
and Stroustrup [6]

With a few modest exceptions, C++ can be considered a superset of the
C programming language. While C++ is similar to C in syntax and structure,
it is important to realize that the two languages are radically different.
Comparing C to C++ is like comparing checkers to chess. Although both
games are played on the same board, one must realize that the game of
chess cannot be played using the same strategy as that used in the game
of checkers. C++ and its support for object-oriented programming
provide a new methodology for designing, implementing and ease of
maintaining software projects which C, a structured programming language,
is unable to support.

Extensive libraries are available for the C programming language;
consequently, a deliberate effort was made on behalf of the developers
of C++ to maintain backward compatibility with C. Any major deviation
from the C programming language would have meant that all the
libraries available for C would have to be tediously rewritten for C++.
This would have severely limited the usefulness of C++ in an environment
where C libraries were used extensively.